EDGE

Ether Dome Group for Entrepreneurship

 It’s time to bring the next generation of medicine to market.

Fueling the power of partnership between Mass General Hospital and industry to the emerging field of Digital Health.

The Ether Dome Group for Entrepreneurship (EDGE) is charged with identifying early-stage innovations and providing the resources to further co-develop, validate and scale the resulting novel healthcare solutions. EDGE is managed by the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Innovation in Digital HealthCare (CIDH), the first and only commercially driven incubator-accelerator program embedded in a fully integrated global care delivery system.

EDGE is the only Digital Health “one-stop-shop” to incubate innovation and accelerate commercialization, with unique expertise across the development lifecycle—from ideation to integration to adoption—to help ensure patient and caregiver engagement, value for clinicians, and success for portfolio companies and sponsors.

Advancements in the field of Digital Health require substantial commitments of clinical, technology, and business know-how, as well as cooperation between multiple healthcare industry partners. EDGE assembles an ecosystem of stakeholders and collaborators to accelerate the development, validation, and commercialization of scalable, accessible digital health solutions.

EDGE for Corporate Sponsors

With a budget of over $1 billion, Mass General is home to the largest hospital-based research enterprise in the world, generating more patents and commercialization activities than any other provider system, academic medical center or medical school in the United States—proving to be the ideal environment for companies to extend their R&D programs into the clinical setting.

EDGE is located on the MGH campus, at the center of the Boston-Cambridge biotech cluster, enabling numerous opportunities to collaborate with partners from industry, venture capital, philanthropists, academia, foundations, governments, philanthropists, and our community to prevent disease, make medical innovation sustainable, and find cures to improve the lives of our patients and those across the globe.

Corporate Sponsors are encouraged to bring forward solutions, including products in development or external ventures identified by your business development teams. At least one Annual Request for Applications (RFA) will be posed to the market to address challenges defined by Mass General Brigham leadership and the EDGE Advisory Committee.

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EDGE for Ventures

EDGE aims to bridge the gap between the transformative entrepreneurs and start-ups, and the provider end-users while advocating that innovation improves the physician-patient experience, reduces administrative burden, and improves clinical outcomes for our patients.

Given the challenges facing the digital health landscape, EDGE is designed to engage stakeholders including providers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and corporations to bring accessible solutions to the market at rapid speed through methodical development.

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EDGE Leadership

Meet the people who co-develop, validate, scale, and identify early-stage innovations for EDGE.

Sara Silacci

Chief Strategy Officer & Senior Managing Director

MGH Center for Innovation in Digital HealthCare

Molly Macfarlane

Manager, Strategic Alliance Initiative

MGH Center for Innovation in Digital HealthCare

Joseph Kvedar, MD

Senior Advisor, MGH Center for Innovation in Digital HealthCare

Professor, Harvard Medical School
Chair of the Board, American Telemedicine Association (ATA)
Editor-in-Chief, npj Digital Medicine

Tradition of Innovation

Leaders of global standards for over a century.

Since its founding in 1811, Mass General has had a history of creating global standards for innovative, compassionate, and accessible care. Of note, on October 16, 1846, in Massachusetts General Hospital’s surgical amphitheater, now known as the Ether Dome, the first public surgery using anesthetic (ether) was performed. Other medical and scientific “firsts” at Mass General Hospital include the first x-ray exposure produced in a hospital, the first antiseptic operating suite in the U.S., and the invention of MRI and fMRI imaging technologies.

A recent example is the Termeer Center for Targeted Cancer Therapies, where together Mass General clinical researchers and industry leaders collaborated to accelerate the clinical development and validation of novel personalized cancer pharmaceuticals. One year after opening, the impact of collaboration was clearly demonstrated as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doubled the number of approved therapies.